My Horse Is Legal Now

Cherry turned 21 this month!


Looking pretty good, isn't she?

Getting Back to Normal

A little over a week ago, Cherry and I experienced an episode of choke. That was fun.

Not.

Cherry was stalled for the week so she could be fed soaked hay and pellet mush. Cherry does not like being stalled. Cherry thought she was perfectly fine and why can't I go outside dammit!

I turned her out in the turnout paddocks as much as possible, but it's still not 24/7 turnout. All these little irritating idiosyncrasies that I thought we were long rid of started popping up again. Head tossing and cross-tie nibbling. Pawing while tied and answering the calls of other horses. Fidgeting and being overly interested in every single piece of grooming equipment. Gah!

All the result of being stalled, which is why Cherry has not lived in a stall for many years. She becomes an irritating loon and unless ridden and ridden hard on a daily basis, our rides deteriorate into me trying to contain the crazy long enough to get some work done. Not good times.

Cherry went back outside today, and if all goes well there she shall remain. She was super excited to see her pasture mate, they missed each other. Awwwww!

Choke

Cherry choked last Sunday. Easter Sunday, to be exact. Of course she did. When else would one choke except on a Sunday, and a Sunday holiday at that. Easter fucking Sunday, when an emergency vet bill is going to run to at least $200. And that’s only for the vet to lay eyes on the horse, never mind the fees for diagnosis and treatment!

Cherry has never choked before, so suffice it to say that I wasn’t terribly familiar with the condition. I got to the barn around 10:30 in the morning. The horses had been fed late, so they were still munching on hay when I arrived.

Except Cherry.

She was standing off by herself in the shade of the shelter in her paddock. That’s not right. Her pasture-mate was happily chowing down on a large quantity of hay, and Cherry should have been right there with her, stuffing her face with equal gusto.

I was a trifle concerned, but felt that there might be an innocent explanation. I brought Cherry up to the barn, and tied her on the tie rail out in the sun. She lipped at her grain, and appeared to eat it. Then she sort of gave up on eating and stood there licking and chewing as if there was something in her mouth that she couldn’t swallow.

And there was.

Now fully alarmed and knowing that all was not right with Cherry, I looked in her mouth. Perhaps she got hold of something she shouldn’t have and it was stuck in her mouth. I didn’t find a foreign object, but I did find a giant wad of hay and the grain she’d appeared to eat stuffed up in her cheeks. She seemed slightly lethargic, and her breathing was shallow and rather rapid.

It was clear she wanted to eat, she was hungry, but for some reason she couldn’t swallow. So she had stuffed as much food in her face as possible and the just rolled it around her mouth. She was also having trouble reaching her head all the way to the ground. She’d lower her head to about 6” off the ground, stop, then lurch down the rest of the way, as if she had to make an effort to overcome either pain or a physical obstruction.

Not really knowing what to do, I decided to take her temperature. 99 degrees, perfectly normal for Cherry. Pulse normal, but the rapid breathing was alarming, as was her depressed demeanor. Gut sounds were normal too, so whatever was going on wasn’t colic. At least, not yet.

I got the barn manager, K, to take a look at Cherry. Like I said, I knew of the existence of choke but never had any first hand experience with it. It was clear to me that Cherry was having trouble swallowing, but what was causing the problem and where exactly the problem was remained a mystery to me.

K looked at Cherry, palpated her throat area, and said it looked a lot like choke. One of her horses choked several months back, and Cherry was showing similar symptoms. There was a hard lump on the right side of her throat, possibly a swollen glad or whatever was choking her.

The first thing to do was get all of the food out of Cherry’s mouth. I pulled out the wadded up hay, and we rinsed her mouth thoroughly with the hose. She actually drank a small amount of water, and perked up enormously. Her breathing returned to normal. She was still having trouble getting her head all the way to the ground, though, and she was still rolling her tongue around her mouth like something was bothering her.

We decided to put her in a stall to better monitor her. K removed the hay from the stall since Cherry was still clearly having issues, and we debated taking her to the vet.

I decided that since it appeared that Cherry was in no immediate danger of dropping dead, the vet could wait until tomorrow. I prepared her some Equine Senior soup, which she slurped down with some difficulty. Good, at least she was getting some water in her, even if she was still plenty hungry.

On Monday, we got a 3 o’clock appointment with the vet. Around here, you bring your horse to the vet. A farm call is at least another $50-$60. Until then, the vet said no food for Cherry but to continue offering her water.

The wind howled and the rain beat down that afternoon. Of course it did! The trailer shook when a particularly strong gust of wind hit as K and I drove to the clinic. Cherry was quite alert as I unloaded her and walked her to the vet’s barn. We put her in the stocks (which are articulated and come completely apart, very cool!) and waited for the vet.

After I described the events of the previous day and Cherry’s symptoms, the vet said it was likely choke. Cherry was sedated and her mouth opened with a speculum. The vet pulled out another wad of hay, and proceeded to feel around for possible tooth issues or foreign objects.

Cherry’s teeth were perfectly fine, but there was a cut at the veeeery back of her mouth. She required more drugs before she let the vet touch it. There was some bloody hay stuck in it, but the cut wasn’t infected and wasn’t very deep. Likely it had made chewing rather painful, which possibly contributed to the choke.

The vet didn’t find anything else, so she recommended a nasogastric tube. A tube was duly inserted in Cherry’s nose. As the vet fed the tube in, there appeared to be some resistance fairly far down the esophagus. A lovely rotting feed smell also emanated from the tube.

Ah, so there it is.

Apparently, Cherry had managed to swallow the bolus lodged in her throat when we stuck the hose in her mouth, but had not managed to get it all the way down. That’s why she perked up, the thing was out of her throat and she thought she was fine again.

The vet pumped about a gallon of water down the tube to flush the bolus into Cherry’s stomach. This was successful. The tube was removed (with barely a bloody nose!), and Cherry was prescribed Banamine to help ease the discomfort of the cut in her mouth and her likely very sore throat.

I was also instructed to feed her only moist feed for the next week. The seven day window following a choke episode is the “danger zone” where it’s likely that the horse will choke again unless fed carefully. Hopefully we caught the choke early enough that no permanent damage was done to her throat.

We waited (forever) for Cherry to wake up enough for the trailer ride home. The drive home was just as windy and unpleasant, but I felt so much better now that Cherry had been treated.

Now fully awake and ravenously hungry, Cherry paced her stall and shrieked for food as soon as we got home. I made her a very mushy bucket of Equine Senior and hay pellets, making sure they were fully soaked and soft. I gave them to her in little bits, as I was afraid she might inhale a giant glob if I put the whole bucket in front of her.

That night and the next morning she got more pellet mush, along with a dose of Banamine, per vet’s instructions. Next night, we added soaked hay to her ration of mush. Now, three days later, she’s eating mostly soaked hay. She’ll be getting that for another day or two, then we’re going to try dry hay.

In Cherry’s mind, she’s fully back to normal and is likely wondering why she’s stuck in a pokey little stall and why all her food is wet. At least I'm able to let her out in a turnout paddock during the day. That saves her sanity a bit.

As for the future, I sincerely hope that this was our first and last experience with choke, but you never know. There's an increased likelihood of choking after the first episode, so it may happen again. I hope not.

If it does become a recurring problem, I may have to find a barn where she can be out on fresh grass or a place where she can come in at night and eat soaked hay but go out during the day. We’ll have to see.

What’s boggling my mind is exactly how this happened. She’s old, but her teeth are still in working order and she can chew just fine. She eats fast, but not that fast. The only thing I can think of is that cut caused her enough pain that she didn’t chew properly. Another thing I noticed was that for the past few days she hadn’t been drinking much. We need to move the water trough, it’s sitting in a puddle and Cherry doesn’t want to get her little hoofies wet. Perhaps the combination of being slightly dehydrated and the pain from the cut caused the choke. Kind of like trying to eat a bunch of Ritz crackers without being able to take a drink of water.

Anyhoo, that’s how we celebrated Easter!

Things Are Happening

I get out to the barn today and learn that "SURPRISE! The barn's been sold! We're moving!"


Surprise, indeed.

Through one person or another, I've known about the "pending" status on the property for quite some time. The first clue was a gaggle of unimpressed looking prospective buyers being led around by a nervous real estate agent. No dice, though.

What irks me the most is that the barn owners didn't say a damn thing until they pinned a note to the bulletin board saying that they've "accepted an offer" and that "not much should change". They've been carrying on like absolutely nothing is wrong and things are just hunky-dory, even acquiring another horse. Then, seemingly out of the blue, "We're off! Ta-ta, dah-ling! It's been real!"

Reading further, they also suppose that board won't change much. Hmmmm, that doesn't exactly bode well. I can't afford to pay a penny more than the current rate, which is rather steep for quality of the facilities in the first place.

All will be made clear at the meeting in May. I hope, though it kind of doesn't matter at this point. Unless the new owners are going to decrease board or turn the place into Horse Paradise, we're not going to be around for much longer.

Spring is Here!

.....kind of.


It was spring for one glorious day. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the wind was a mere gentle breeze. *sigh*


Then it snowed again.


The important thing to take away from that is that the weather here has been less predictable than a than the whims of a particularly capricious adolescent girl. Actually I take that back. It's been very predictable. Cold, wet, occasionally freezing, and really fucking windy.

The kind of weather where you look out the window and think, "Hmm, looks like it sucks out there." Then you go outside, squint into the wind, shiver, and think, "Yup, certainly does suck out here!"

This is where the sane, non-horse owning person goes directly back into their warm and non-windy house. Or hops in their car to go to an equally warm and equally non-windy building.

The (arguably) insane horse owner not only goes out into the frozen gale, but stands there calling for Fluffy at the pasture gate while standing ankle deep in mud. Fluffy, of course, is snug in her shelter thinking, "No food? Fuck you, I'm staying in here."

Whee, horses are so awesome sometimes. And spring is just fan-fucking-tabulous out here.

Pony is Sound

I've been working two jobs these last couple weeks, which is both awesome (yay money!) and not so awesome (boo no time!). Plus, it's been cold, wet, muddy and miserable, meaning that my barn time has been limited. Whenever I've had the energy to ride, the wind is gusting and Cherry is sniffing the air like there just might be demons lurking over that next hill.

Today the weather was nice for a change, but I'm so dead tired from lack of sleep last night that I don't think I can handle it. Besides, I haven't been riding regularly, and we all know what happens when Cherry isn't ridden regularly... Wheee! It's time to RUN!!!! OMG what was that?! ZOMG scary!!! This is FUN!

Not what I want to deal with right now.

Since it was so nice out, I turned Cherry out in the outdoor turnout paddock where there's a thin crop of grass coming up. She snorted a bit, so I chased her around so she'd forget about the grass for a minute and move.

This turnout is on a fairly steep hill, and Cherry went trotting and cantering around with her tail flagged and her head up in perfect "excited Arabian" form. She even threw in a little bucking for good measure.

I love watching horses move out just for the fun of it. Today was doubly cool because she didn't take a single lame step the whole time, not one. In the indoor arena, she appears to be kinda on and off lame, and it really bugs me. Out in the dirt though, she's perfectly sound. Extended trot downhill, no problem!

The arena footing is pretty shitty, and there's several uneven and hard spots littered all over. Her hooves aren't quite tough enough to handle it yet, so her stride is thrown off and she's lame. It really screws with my head. I scrutinize her gait, watch her like a hawk, and drive myself demented wondering if it's the arthritis, the hoof, or something new.

It's not. She's fine, her hooves just aren't ready to handle the crap footing without protection yet.

I guess no more indoor arena turnout without boots. To save my sanity if nothing else.

Time for a Trim

Cherry is due for a trim! I'm getting pretty good at figuring out when she needs trimming now. Not that I was terrible at it before, but there are subtle signs that her feet are getting long.

First sign, she stands a little funny. Normally Cherry stands fairly square, but when her feet get long she stands cockeyed more often. It's not exaggerated, and you wouldn't notice if you weren't looking.

Second, she gets more tender in the indoor arena. Weird, I know. You'd think she'd be tender after a trim rather than before. But when the wall gets too long it aggravates the flares we're getting rid of, which makes her sole tender. Since the arena has not so awesome footing with several hard spots, the increased sole tenderness leads to off steps in the arena.

Third, her toes look looooong. Since we're bringing back the toe in an effort to curtail the stretching out of her front toes, when her feet get long her toes get reeeeally long.

I looked at her feet today, and I think with just a little bit off the heels and bars as well as backing up the toe, she'll be good to go.